Expert Advisors
Prof Andy Dickerson
Andy Dickerson is Professor at the Department of Economics at the University of Sheffield. He is a former member of the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UK CES) Expert Panel which advised the UK CES on skills and productivity issues. He previously coordinated the activities of the DWP-sponsored Work, Pensions and Labour Economics Study Group (WPEG) from 2006-2010, and was a member of the ESRC Research Studentship Competition Panel from 2007-2010.
Andy's research interests are focussed on the operation and functioning of labour markets, the interaction between financial and product markets and the labour market, and the analysis of micro and longitudinal data, including matched datasets.
Prof Stephen Machin
Steve Machin is Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and the director of the Centre for Economic Performance. He advises the Low Pay Commission as an independent member, is a fellow of the Society of Labor Economists and the British Academy. Steve is a council member of the Royal Economic Association and the European Economic Association and special advisor to the Education Select Committee on Academies and Free Schools. Steve's recent research focuses on labour market inequalities and the economics of education, including the effect of the introduction of Academy schools to the English schooling sector on student outcomes and inequalities.
Prof Eric Maurin
Eric Maurin is Directeur d'études at Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris and Chaired Professor at the Paris School of Economics. His fields of interest include the economics of education, labour economics and econometrics. He is Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research, the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), and J-Pal Europe, and is International Fellow at the Centre for Economic Performance. Eric's recent research include the impact of school and peer effects on student behaviour and outcomes, and the role of parental involvement in their children's schooling. He has extensive experience in randomized controlled trials and has designed and evaluated various school interventions.
Prof Lord Richard Layard
Richard Layard is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, where he was until 2003 the founder-director of the Centre for Economic Performance. He now heads the Centre's Programme on Wellbeing. Since 2000 he has been a member of the House of Lords.
He has worked on unemployment, inflation, education, inequality, and post-Communist reform. He was an early advocate of the welfare-to-work approach to European unemployment, and his work has influenced policy in many countries. He has also been a champion of apprenticeships for the last 25 years. In 2008, he was awarded the IZA Prize in Labour Economics, jointly with Steve Nickell. More recently he has focussed mainly on wellbeing at all ages.
Dr Hilary Steedman
Hilary Steedman has been engaged in research on apprenticeship, vocational training and labour market transitions since the early 1980s, first at the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR) and subsequently as a Senior Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics (LSE). She has directed a number of major research programmes using international comparisons to analyse UK policy and practice and consulted for the EC, CEDEFOP and the OECD. Her particular expertise is international comparisons of education systems and provision, including the supply of and demand for skills.
Recent research with partners in six European countries focused on the future of the low-skilled on the labour market and implications for education. She is currently focusing on international comparisons of post-16 education and training policy, with a special interest in apprenticeships.
Prof Stefan Wolter
Stefan Wolter is professor of Economics at the University of Bern and head of the Centre for Research in Economics of Education. He is also the Chair of the Group of National Experts on VET of the OECD in Paris, where he also represents Switzerland in the Education Policy Committee and is a Governing Board Member of the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI). He has been the founding President of the Swiss Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (2005-2011) and is also the founding co-director of the Swiss Leading House on the "Economics of Education, Firm behavior and training polices", together with professor U. Backes-Gellner (University of Zurich).
Prof Ludger Wößmann
Ludger Wößmann is Professor of Economics at the University of Munich and Director of the Ifo Center for the Economics of Education at the Ifo Institute. His main research interests are the determinants of long-run prosperity and of student achievement. He uses microeconometric methods to answer applied, policy-relevant questions of the empirical economics of education, often using international student achievement tests. Special focusses address the importance of education for economic prosperity - individual and societal, historical and modern - and the importance of institutions of the school systems for efficiency and equity.
Further research topics cover aspects of economic history, economics of religion, and the Internet. His work was rewarded, among others, with the Gossen Prize of the German Economic Association, the Young Economist Award of the European Economic Association, the EIB Prize of the European Investment Bank, and the Bruce H. Choppin Memorial Award of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement.